4. Samuel L Jackson - The Spirit
Samuel L Jackson has a very blue collar attitude to his profession. He loves his work and he loves working, making an average of 4 movies a year. In many ways he is the Michael Caine de nos jours. The amount of films he makes means that his quality control is bound to be off on occasion. Sam's the man, and as the consummate professional he can 'phone in a performance and still be the best thing in the movie. This is one of those. In 2008 Mr Jackson finally broke into the lucrative superhero market with his first Marvel cameo in Iron Man and a role in Frank Miller's The Spirit. A comic book legend, Frank Miller is the yin to Alan Moore's yang. Whilst the former rants against the Occupy movement, the latter is embraced by it. There was an inevitability, therefore, that Miller would make a move into the film business with an enthusiasm only matched by Alan Moore's rejection of it. He debuted in 2005 as co-director on Sin City with Robert Rodriguez and then followed this up with The Spirit (2008), which he wrote and directed solo in a visual style lazily similar to that of Sin City. You know the form: black and white comic book panel composition, shadows, silhouettes and blood splashing white from a victim's shattered skull. Midway through this grindingly dull experience Samuel L. Jackson, interrogates the titular hero dressed in a Nazi uniform. In fact Mr Jackson spends most of this movie rifling through his dressing up box. Miller let Sam improvise his lines and invent his character's look (in the comics his character, Octopus, was a disembodied pair of gloves), which was a mistake because Mr Jackson runs amok. It's like he's in a completely different movie to everyone else, the needs of the story secondary to him having a bit of a laugh. He's more over the top than a tackle from a Wigan Athletic midfielder and this results in a very uneven movie with everyone else on one side and Sam on the other yucking it up as he trousers the paycheck.